Archive for the ‘Site Changes’ Category

Among my car-related pet peeves, I hate it when I hear that one car has “more rear legroom” than another when such a claim ignores that the other car has significantly more front legroom. Among the ugly secrets of legroom specs is one that should be, but rarely seems to be, obvious: you can move at least the front seat, and alter both front and rear legroom in the process. To avoid making a misleading comparison in my own reviews, I check the total amount of legroom.

For example, I recently compared the new 2013 Nissan Pathfinder with the GMC Acadia. According to the official specs, the Acadia has significantly more third-row legroom, 33.2 inches vs. 30.7. But focusing on this spec ignores the fact that the second row can be adjusted fore-and-aft along a roughly half-foot track in either vehicle. The front seat similarly adjusts, like in just about any car. To really compare legroom, we’ve got to sum the specs for all three rows: 41.3+36.8+33.2 for the Acadia vs. 42.3+41.7+30.7 for the Pathfinder. Do this, and you’ll find that the Nissan comes out 3.4 inches ahead, 114.7 vs. 111.3.

We recently improved TrueDelta’s specs pages. Since we were messing with the code anyway, we added a new “total legroom” spec. Now I won’t have to actually do the math. And you won’t, either!

truedelta.com/vehicle-specs

Since the beginning of the site I’ve maintained a database with the specs and features for cars sold in the U.S. This database supported our car price and features tool, and our single model specs pages. But if you simply wanted to compare the specs for two models, you had to configure them and see the prices as well. And if you wanted to see all of the features available on a model, well, you couldn’t. I wanted to create pages to provide this information, but never could find the time for it. Luckily, Gayla has. On the specs pages you can now compare two models. And on new features pages you can view all of the standard and optional features for a single car model, or compare those for two car models.

To get to both seats of pages, click the “specs” tab in the nav bar. You’ll also find both listed in the “more about this car” box on each information page.

I don’t talk much about what Gayla and I wrestle with from day to day to keep the site up and running (mostly me) and improving (mostly her). Some of it is fun, but a lot of it isn’t. Well, in 2011 we descended into site owner-operator hell. And in 2012 we fought our way back out.

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When we first developed the formulas for graphically representing TrueDelta’s car reliability stats, we had far less data. We had to rely on cars with small sample sizes to get an idea of the breadth of the range from “fewest repair trips” to “most repair trips.”

We thoroughly revisited these calculations with the latest update. This time around, with more data to work with, we entirely ignored models for which we have fewer than 25 responses. The larger the sample size, the lower the possibility of extreme numbers, and highest “repair trips per year” stat for a given model year was much lower. The resulting formulas have a much smaller range from “fewest” to “most.”

We don’t balance the scale strictly about an average, because the intent is to give cars unlikely to have problems a “happy face” and reserve the “unhappy face” for models that are clearly troublesome. Put another way, as the average continues to improve we wouldn’t want to force bad ratings on cars that were actually fairly reliable in absolute (if not relative) terms. Keeping the old scale with the new formula yielded some overly conservative faces–the lower limits for the yellow and red faces seemed too low.

To counteract this, we shifted the divisions a point to the right on the eleven-point scale. Previously, the first three points were green, the next four yellow, and the last four red. This made sense as outliers had distended the “most repairs” end. With the new, compressed scale, we now have four green, four yellow, and three red.

Even with the shift, some scores that would have been green earlier are now yellow, and some that were yellow are now red. In the GMC Terrain example shown, both the 2010 and 2011 are so affected. Even so, reds remain uncommon. Few recent car models have proved to be troublesome, and we intend for the scales and faces to reflect this.

We’ve enhanced our fuel economy survey and results. Now you can:

• edit previous entries
• enter the fill-up date on a tank
• indicate heavy cargo or towing (for exclusion from the public stats)
• enter comments
• report on electric vehicles
• toggle the units used in the results (either MPG or g/100m, for example)

Also, you can now view fuel economy results and record your fill-ups on mobile devices! (A lot of people have been asking for this.) Go to m.truedelta.com/mpg on your mobile device to get started.

We’ll have another round of updates later this year or early next. If you have something else you’d like us to add, let us know.

Members outside the U.S. and Canada have enrolled over 6,000 cars. In many cases either the model or the powertrain isn’t offered in the U.S. And, if we hadn’t entered specs for it in the database, no information could be posted about the car.

I’d love to see information on these cars, so for the past week I’ve been entering specs for nearly every 2012 model offered in the UK by a volume manufacturer (so still no Morgans), and some from the Continent and Australia as well. This was quite the task, as European-market cars tend to have far more powertrain options than the U.S. and Canada.

Information can now be posted for all of these cars.

Have a car for which we haven’t entered the specs yet, so you can’t post information about the car? Let us know, and we’ll add it. Now that the 2012s are in there, it’s much easier to add specs for an earlier model year.

People have been asking me for years why I don’t post car reviews to TrueDelta. Part of the reason: I wanted a unique format, and none seemed quite right.

Well, I found one that works, or at least hope I have! It’s based on the “Why (Not) This Car?” format we’ve been using for owner reviews. The biggest change: when comparing two cars, pros are no longer posted for one car and cons for the other. Instead, pros and cons are posted for the focal car, which is then rated against the comparison vehicle. We’ll be making the same change to the format for owner reviews in the next month or so (the tough part is converting reviews posted in the old format to the new one). I can also include photos in my reviews. We haven’t decided if and when we’ll add this capability to member reviews. If you’d like it, let us know!

I’ve posted a few reviews–to view them select “TrueDelta review” in the first drop down. Let me know what you think!

Car reviews

Some day we’ll remember the months around last December’s site redesign fondly. Or maybe the memories will just fade. They were tough, real tough. Entirely redesigning the site resurfaced dozens of bugs that had been fixed over the years, and created many new ones. Thanks to member feedback (and a lot of hard work by Gayla) these are now largely behind us.

So Gayla has been able to shift her focus to the fun stuff, adding new features and improving existing ones. One of her ideas: a new comment system on the reliability and repair history pages (and perhaps others as well in the future). See something interesting? You can now share your insights.

Gayla has also reworked the menus on the pricing pages, so it’s now much easier to run multiple related configurations and comparisons.

We’ve also started posting the most commonly wishlisted cars on the vehicle specifications home page. Have a car you’re interested in, and would like to easily look up information about? Add it to your wish list.

Have an improvement you’d like to see? Let us know!

A month ago we rolled out a complete redesign of the TrueDelta site. In addition to improving the appearance and navigation of the site, the redesign includes a few new features (with more on the way).

To start, it is now possible to go to any of the results pages for your cars directly from “My Garage.” The drop downs next to each car are organized by topic area then when you can do within each area: view stats for all cars, view the records for just your own car, or make a new entry.

Have a car that you’d like to follow the results for, but don’t own it, at least not yet? Then add it to your “wish list.” The drop down next to each wish listed car will take you straight to the results pages for it.

As before, “My Garage” can be reached from a button in the nav bar at the top of each page.

Other new features include:

–ability to log in from nearly any page on the site, and land back on that page, via a link at the top right of the page (yes, this one was overdue)

–select two models when comparing reliability stats

Not yet done (obviously): converting this blog to the new look!

Something else you’d like to see? Let us know!

The current site is in its final days, perhaps even its final hours.

For the past nine months we–and especially Gayla, my wife and for the past year our programmer–have been working to apply a new design to the site.

She’s now working out the kinks in the Car Reliability Survey, the programming of which has always been complicated, and which is taking an exponential leap with the redesign (because, well, she’s a much better programmer than I’ll ever be). We’re re-learning (the hard way, but not the hardest way–that would be post-launch) the reasons why I made this or that tweak over the years.

Will the survey emerge okay? Will Gayla? No physical danger, but my code has a way of driving people insane (when they’re not laughing at it).

And then the thought hits me. I’ve been here before. Nervous, largely standing by as a nine-month process reaches a challenging climax.

It’s a bit much like when each of our children was born.